Vietnam War body count controversy
For search and destroy operations, as the objective was not to hold territory or secure populations, victory was assessed by having a higher enemy body count.According to historian Christian Appy, "search and destroy was the principal tactic; and the enemy body count was the primary measure of progress" in General William Westmoreland’s war of attrition."Search and destroy" was coined as a phrase in 1965 to describe missions aimed at flushing the VC out of hiding, while the body count was the measuring stick for the success of any operation.Since the early stages of the war did not seek to hold territory, assessments of whether an operation was considered a victory or not was entirely based on having a higher enemy killed ratio for U.S.[6][1][7] Since body counts was a direct measure of operational success, this often caused U.S. battle reports to list civilians killed as enemy KIA.Former marine officer and later war-time correspondent Philip Caputo in the book A Rumor of War noted: General Westmoreland's strategy of attrition also had an important effect on our behavior.A young captain had told the investigators a sickening story: he'd been under so much pressure from headquarters to boost his numbers that he'd nearly gotten into a fistfight with a South Vietnamese officer over whose unit would take credit for various enemy body parts.Typical comments by the respondents were that it was 'a fake – totally worthless', that 'the immensity of the false reporting is a blot on the honor of the Army', and that they were grossly exaggerated by many units primarily because of the incredible interest shown by people like McNamara and Westmoreland.[17]Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel states that U.S. commanders on the ground inflated body counts since this was how their success was judged.For instance, dying soldiers put aboard medical evacuation helicopters were often counted as only wounded in unit after-action tables.